Dappled...

The leaves are several weeks behind, but the Fall light is right on schedule. We finally have frost, but only in the low spots. All the things a hard frost is supposed to take care of are still hanging around... Mosquitos, gnats, and most insidious of all, kudzu.

My Carolina cabin is in deep woods. There are several color changes over the seasonal progressions but the color is never grey. With white pine, yellow pine, holly, and, for afew more years at least, Hemlock trees scattered about, there is always green, just more or less depending on the calendar. There's far more green than there should be right now, we're naming tropical storms after Greek letters, and even Republicans are starting to worry about global warming.

When climate change starts trashing gambling casinos and beach houses of the rich and well connected, it may be time to go ballistic. I sense a new round of tax cuts and no bid contracts to ease the pain and suffering of the mega corporations and those who love them. The best way to help the tens of thousands of hurricane homeless is obviously by spending billions with contractors with no real plan on what to do, while at the same time, eliminating the need to pay a living wage to those who desperately need a paying job.

Well away from the coast and mindless of global events, Spiders are enjoying a brief immortallity granted by the absence of coherant weather. They are still doing spidery things along the pine board walls of the cabin. We've stopped the flying squirrels from getting in, but not so the arachnids. I don't really mind the time spent with the broom for the first thirty minutes of each visit, but now the beasties are getting a little too large to share the shower with...they have to go...I sentence them to Death by vacuum cleaner!

The low angle of Fall sunlight gives it no advantage in its attempts at penetrating the canopy of deciduous hangers on. In a few weeks, the season will catch up, and the leaves will lie on the forest floor, but for this cold morning, the light is a patchwork of angled beams. Brilliant illumination here, dark green there. The pileated woodpeckers flash red, now white, now black, as they fly among the tall trunks and pass through the spots of light. It is a light show, unexpected in the harshness of morning light in the forest.

There is metaphor in the forest. The events of this past week reveal themselves in a similar way, as harsh light is shined upon the players and their mean spirited actions in this sordid time in National events. There is momentary brilliant light showing us the cowardly actions of three of the four highest ranking men in the Whitehouse. One is indicted, not for his real crime of treason, but for cowardice...lying...trying to save his own ass from justice... Unindicted so far, For the scurrilous act of attempting to harm the wife of a man who had the gall to stand before the world and call his President a liar.

With the lie exposed, there was no defense...Only the task of political punshment for the man who dared to have personal honor.

"Expose my lie," said the Whitehouse, "...and I will harm your family."

"Let this be a warning to others who would dare stand before the world and speak the truth." said Official A speaking from the shadows.

These were the actions of mobsters committed in the darkness provided by a frightened and cowardly press corp, who scurried about to do the bidding of the Don...

But the season must advance, no matter how delayed. and the parasol will turn its colors and drop to the forest floor, unleashing the sun. There will be brilliance everywhere, and all will be seen by those who have the personal courage to look. This will be a time of challenge, when it comes, for those who have existed in denial, peering only into the darkness and refusing to see the true colors exposed in the brilliance of the dappled patches of truth lying about this nation's forest floor.

Will they have courage, these friends of ours, to look into the light?

We will know very soon.

Peace,

Steve